Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3
Trend:
BP on behalf of its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), Shah Deniz (SD), and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) projects is holding the third "Meet the Buyer" event. The venue of this year's event, which opened in Baku on June 3, is Baku Expo Centre. It will be open to public during the four days of the 21st Caspian Oil and Gas Exhibition - 3-6 June.
This event is part of BP's commitment to helping local companies increase their participation in BP-operated projects through enhancing their capabilities, developing their business and building relationship with their potential clients, BP reported. As part of the annual Oil and Gas Exhibition the "Meet the Buyer" event is expected to attract a larger number of international clients to meet the local oil and gas supplier market representatives helping them reach international markets.
This year's event is an opportunity for up to 70 local companies, which have been through BP and co-venturers' enterprise development and training programme - EDTP, to meet face-to-face with their potential clients, to build relationships with them and to showcase what they are capable of. These are companies representing operations support, engineering, construction, logistics, waste management, business services and other categories.
In addition, more than 500 potential buyers have been invited to attend the event and meet their potential suppliers, as well as other representatives of the local oil and gas industry supply chain.
This year BP and its co-ventures are also supporting the participation in this exhibition of the leading oil and gas universities of Azerbaijan. These include the State Oil Academy, Baku Higher Oil School, Khazar University and Qafqaz University. The event presents a good opportunity for these universities to promote themselves as part of the entire chain of the oil and gas industry, enterprise and capability development.
As part of the "Meet the Buyer" event, BP and co-venturers' special Enterprise Development Awards will also be presented to a group of selected local companies. These include enterprises that have been particularly successful in their development efforts: successfully completed EDTP, made substantial contribution to enterprise development in Azerbaijan and focused on developing their local staff.
To select the winners, BP requested nominations from the EDTP clients and evaluated them against the award criteria. The awards will be presented in four categories:
1. The Company of the Year - for the best local company, which has achieved a major business success and demonstrated outstanding performance in health, safety and environment, innovative use of technology and overall enterprise development;
2. The Best HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) Performance - for outstanding records and achievements in safety/environment/health;
3. The Best Employer - for commitment to developing the skills and experience of the local staff;
4. The Most Innovative Use of Technology - for extensive use of new technology in an innovative way to improve performance and efficiency.
Wilbert Long, Vice-President, PSCM in his opening speech at the event said that over the past two decades BP and its co-venturers have built excellent partnership with the government and excellent cooperation with all their stakeholders including local companies.
"Our support for and close cooperation with local enterprises has to date resulted in significant increase in their participation in our operations and projects. This is in line with our aims and targets. We aim to assist Azerbaijan-based companies to develop their businesses in support of major oil and gas developments in the region", he said.
"For this purpose we launched five years ago various training and development programmes including the multi-million dollar worth Enterprise Development and Training Programme - EDTP", he added.
This initiative, according to Long, offers local businesses a straightforward way of learning more about the standards required to become part of an international supplier network.
"Today's event is in fact part of our support for local companies By hosting this event we want to create opportunities for those SMEs that normally find it difficult to make their way through big companies. We want to offer them a chance to directly engage with their clients. On the other hand, this event presents a chance to buyers as well - here they can check the pulse of the local market and find out what is available", he said.